Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
5/22/2015
Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden will not sign off on the Department of Energy sending more spent nuclear fuel to the Idaho National Laboratory for research until DOE begins processing the remaining liquid waste at the site, a Wasden spokesman said this week. Controversy erupted earlier this year when DOE sought a waiver that would allow research quantities of spent nuclear fuel into Idaho, but Idaho officials would only allow it if cleanup milestones at Idaho National Laboratory were met. “The Attorney General will not approve or signoff on any shipments of spent nuclear fuels rods into the state to be delivered at Idaho National Laboratory until such times that the Department of Energy has begun processing the sodium-bearing high-level nuclear waste, the liquid waste, that is being stored at the Laboratory,” Attorney General spokesman Todd Dvorak told RW Monitor this week.
DOE has faced challenges getting Idaho’s Integrated Waste Treatment Unit, intended to process the remaining liquid waste, up and running. The Department currently has a commitment to the state of Idaho to begin processing waste at the facility by the fall of 2016, though according to Idaho environmental regulators, DOE is now looking at being able to begin radioactive waste processing this fall. DOE also has a new commitment to the state of Idaho to have the remaining waste tanks at the Idaho site out of service by the end of 2018. The new milestone was reached after DOE previously missed commitments to have all of the liquid waste processed by the end of 2012, and then by the end of 2014.
Shipments Would Support High Burnup Fuel Study
The fuel shipments would be necessary to support the Department’s high burnup fuel study, conducted by the Electric Power Research Institute. The research is aimed at better understanding the effects of high burn-up fuel aging on dry storage cask systems and to support DOE’s ongoing research and development to advance understanding of the long-term aging of spent fuel. The study plans to look at the technical, economic, and non-proliferation aspects of the fuel while also enabling fuel performance studies for the nuclear industry. Researchers will examine two dozen spent fuel rods before they are placed in the cask to determine the changes that occur over long-term storage. After the casks have been dried correctly, the researchers will move it to the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation pad, where it will be stored for a decade. DOE had anticipated shipping the material to INL in January 2016, according to a Dec. 31, 2014 letter from Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz.
